Every company has its distinctive culture, but there’s one component that keeps every culture alive: peer recognition.
With the exponential changes that team and company processes have been going through in the last few years, it’s vital to talk about why peer recognition is important in this day and age.
Developing trust among employees and increasing their level of engagement is in the leaders’ hands. However, as flatter hierarchies become more standard within organizations, It’s just as essential to make sure that peers give each other credit.
In this article, let’s find out why peer recognition is important and why you should implement it as a common practice in your company.
But first, let’s find out what peer-to-peer recognition is and why you should prioritize such an approach.
What is Peer to Peer Recognition?
Peer recognition is the authentic act of employees valuing one another’s efforts and contributions, ideally carried out consistently. Yet, it doesn’t only imply recognition from higher-level representatives of the company.
When recognizing one other’s talents and how each employee contributes to the team, peers have varying perspectives. Those perspectives may not always match with the ones C-level colleagues have.
For this reason, it’s to the benefit of every company leader to incorporate peer-to-peer recognition practices within teams.
Peer recognition is central since, at its core, it’s the celebration of each and every employee’s hard work and individual input.
Peer-to-peer recognition examples may involve special programs, digital software, handwritten ‘thank you’ notes or emails, tagging the person on social media, leaving thoughtful reviews or endorsements on LinkedIn, addressing them with a speech, creating testimonials in different sizes and shapes, and the list goes on and on…
Similarly, an example of peer recognition practice can be a carefully selected platform tailored to your specific company and team.
With this in mind, let’s have a quick look at seven reasons why peer recognition is important
Facilitates the Onboarding Process for New Employees
The onboarding process is exciting and nerve-racking for all newcomers. The success of that process depends not only on the management but also on the whole staff and especially the immediate peers of the new employee.
To be more precise, if you’re part of a remote-first working model that’s become even more common today, you must pay special effort to the onboarding process.
Remote work is not going anywhere anytime soon, according to research, and it requires an entirely different set of methods, tools, and collaborative effort.
In our case, you can take peer recognition software as a practical method that can directly impact providing a smooth onboarding process.
Strengthens Genuine Employee Engagement and Productivity
The second reason why peer recognition is important is that by bringing such practice into the team culture, you will notice employee engagement, thus, increasing revenue streams.
Why? Because engaged, happy, and valued employees are the cornerstone for successful business growth and prosperity.
Aside from being a simple practice, peer-to-peer recognition is a business model that allows workers to publicly appreciate one another’s accomplishments, demonstrated skills, and deliverables.
According to studies, employee engagement in companies has reduced turnover and influenced the retention of top talent.
Today, as much as workers love bonuses and surprise packages, they get their daily dose of willingness and motivation to contribute to the team based on the reactions of the people they work closely with.
But peer recognition is not only about bonuses or encouragement. It’s about building the foundations for positive and empowering relationships between employees.
Develops Shared Trust and Empathy
Peer recognition is the evidence that employees’ voices are heard and evaluated, however diverse they are.
The more your staff can show appreciation and care for one another, the more they will grow to trust one another. Recognition given by peers to peers has the potential to create a workplace that is more cooperative and empathic.
One of the reasons empathy is required is the fact that everyone has different backgrounds. Realizing that helps to set up a culture of embracing diversity and inclusion.
Over time, this approach has been proven to open doors for new markets and opportunities for businesses, attracting employees that embrace and prioritize diversity.
That is why peer recognition is important for employees of all levels and functions. It’s the foundation for better company culture in the long run.
And this leads to the following reason why peer recognition is important.
Builds an Atmosphere of Collaboration and Boosts Performance
The corporate world seems to have turned upside down with the great resignation, the collective switch to a remote-first model, and whatnot. Peer recognition may just be the real cure that has been left overlooked.
When peers know that their time and resources are valued in the most simple but rewarding ways, they start cultivating a culture of collective growth.
Happy and heard employees thrive in collaboration no matter how many obstacles they face at work.
Every employee is, first and foremost, a human being, and peer recognition is the restatement of that factor.
As humans, we prosper within communities, helping each other grow. Similarly, peer-to-peer recognition boosts employee performance by reminding them that they’re human in the first place and that they’re at the core of a strong company culture.
Collaboration, as a result, drives more significant outcomes in the entire business development.
Increases Return on Investment
You heard that right!
According to research conducted by Gallup, businesses with highly engaged workers see a 21 percent gain in profitability and a 1 percent increase in workforce engagement. It has been shown that firms that prioritize recognition experience greater levels of performance and are able to achieve greater levels of financial profitability.
Harvard Business Review reports an analysis conducted to compare the impact of increased peer-to-peer recognition with increased wages.
By investing in peer recognition, they could attain nearly half of the engagement, but it would cost just 5% of what they would have spent on compensation increases. In other words, recognition could make people half as engaged as a raise, but it would cost 95% less than a raise.
Serves as a Form of Positive Feedback
Every employee strives for stable career growth and recognition of talents. But why is peer-to-peer recognition important in reaching that, you might think?
When we work on our hard and soft skills, we tend to anticipate recognition from others for the efforts we’ve put into it. We want to feel heard and seen so we can notice areas of knowledge we have missed to work on.
Peer recognition gives every employee an equal opportunity to experience a practical and scaleable system of receiving feedback.
And as such, you can consider peer recognition a practice of consistently giving positive feedback to one another within the team.
This leads to our final reason why peer recognition is important.
Helps Employees to Feel That They’re Making a Greater Impact
Every employee’s hidden urge is to know that they’re on the right path within the organization. And it’s even more desirable for them to know they’re important for the company’s growth.
Letting employees know that they’ve made a contribution to the company is an excellent source of motivation.
You can do it in small steps from day to day by establishing a culture of peer recognition within your company.
Every employee’s hidden urge is to know that they’re on the right path within the organization. And it’s even more desirable for them to know they’re important for the company’s growth.
Letting employees know that they’ve made a contribution to the company is an excellent source of motivation.
Take small steps towards peer recognition every single day with Lucky Carrot.
When peers give each other credit, it’s a sign that everyone is on the same page and moving towards one goal. It becomes proof of continuous growth and longevity in cooperation with the team, hence why peer recognition is important.
